MCV Overhauls UK Top Ten Chart To Include Digital Sales

The Market for Computer and Video Games (MCV) have vowed to publish a weekly top ten chart of video games sales that incorporates digital downloads as well as physical purchases.

Chart-Track and UKIE, the independent sales tracking companies, publish a weekly Top Ten made up of only physical sales despite attempts to start incorporating digital sales, but this would require approval from 100 percent of publishers.

MCV have shown through their own research that the UK Top Ten would look very different had digital sales been included in the charting, with Paradox Interactive’s Cities: Skylines taking the top spot with 60,000 sales, knocking Grand Theft Auto V from the top spot.

Indie sequel Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number would also have come in fourth had digital sales been included, but fails to even be considered because of physical-only restrictions in the charts.

MCV have said: “Until a formal solution is offered for better showing the health of software sales in the UK, MCV is committed to offering a substitute. Going forward, we hope to start publishing regular charts accurately taking into account digital sales like the one above. Using a variety of sources, we will try to accurately portray a total measure of games sales in the UK, across both boxed and digital. We do not guarantee 100 per cent accuracy from day one – but what we do promise is to start bringing some unity on the otherwise separated and fractured data sources in the business.”

See below the differences in the physical and physical-digital charts below, compiled by MCV using third-party sales statistics from publishers.

Source: MCV